Notable Alumni in the Arts

D'Agostino, Albert (1892 - 1970)
Film
Art Director
CC

D'Agostino created sets for some of the film industry's top directors from the 1930s through the 1950s. From 1939-1958, D'Agostino worked as the supervising art director for RKO, collaborating on the entire output of the studio on over 65 films. He is best remembered for his success underpinning character psychology in his designs for horror and mystery films such as Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and Isle of the Dead (1945). His 19th-century Edinburgh in The Body Snatcher (1945) and his French village in Mademoiselle Fifi (1944) are considered his most convincing period designs. Learn more.


D'Erasmo, Stacey (1961 - )
Literature
Writer
'83BC

Stacey D'Erasmo's debut novel, Tea (2000), is a coming-of-age and coming out story that captures its protagonist at three stages of life in three distinct moments of American popular culture. She won the Gordon Ray Prize in Victorian Literature at NYU, where she completed graduate studies in English and American literature, as well as a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant in nonfiction literature. Her second novel, A Seahorse Year, hit the shelves in 2004. Learn more.


Danticat, Edwidge (1969 - )
Literature
Fiction and Nonfiction Writer
'90BC

Danticat was inspired by her family's storytelling to write about her immigration from Haiti to Brooklyn at the age of twelve. Danticat's MFA thesis at Brown University, a coming-of-age story titled, Breath, Eyes, Memory, became her first published novel. Breath was selected for Oprah's Book Club, which helped it become a paperback bestseller. Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist in 1995, and Farming of Bones (1998) established Danticat as "the voice" of Haitian Americans, though Danticat maintains that she is one of many Haitian American voices. She has been praised for her unflinching examination of Haitian culture, careful blending of history and fiction, and delicate treatment of monumental themes. Danticat has also written a novel for young people, edited a collection of short stories, and worked with the National Coalition for Haitian Rights.

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Daum, Meghan (1970 - )
Literature
Nonfiction Writer
'96SOA

Daum contributes a weekly column to the Los Angeles Times. She has published articles and essays in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper's Bazaar, The Village Voice and Vogue. Her honest cultural observations have illustrated her gifts as a storyteller, reporter and satirist. She has published two collections of essays: Let the Trinkets Do the Talking: Essays, Abstractions, and Absurdities (2001) and My Misspent Youth: Essays (2001). Her novel, The Quality of Life Report, was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2003. Learn more.


Davis, Lydia (1947 - )
Literature
Writer, Translator
'70BC

Lydia Davis simultaneous enjoys two careers-one as a fiction writer and another as translator of French writers and philosophers. Her short story collection, Break It Down, won the 1988 Whiting Writers Award and the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for Fiction. Davis has published a novel, The End of the Story (1995), along with several short story collections: The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976), Sketches for a Life of Wassilly (1981), and Story, and Other Stories (1984). Davis has translated novels, biographies and other scholarly works by French authors such as Marcel Proust, Maurice Blanchot and the Marquis de Sade. She has garnered the French-American Foundation Translation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2003 MacArthur "Genius" grant. Learn more.


de Lima, Sigrid (1922 - 1999)
Literature
Fiction Writer
'42BC

De Lima's debut novel, Captain's Beach (1950), a survival story set in New York rooming houses, was the first out of the Hiram Haydn's workshop at the New School for Social Research. De Lima won the Prix de Rome for her next work, The Swift Cloud (1952), and published Carnival by the Sea in 1954. Though her last two works, Praise a Fine Day (1959) and Oriane (1968), were also successful with critics, de Lima did not publish again after Oriane's release.


de Mille, William C. (1878 - 1955)
Film, Theater
Playwright, Screenwriter
1900CC

A son of playwright Henry C. de Mille and brother of Cecil B. de Mille, William C. de Mille became a playwright and screenwriter during the first years of the motion picture. Between 1902 and 1914, he authored more than two dozen comedies, farces and serious plays in New York. De Mille followed his brother to Hollywood in 1914 and began directing such movies as Anton, the Terrible and Miss Lulu Bett. He wrote seven screenplays and directed more than fifty silent and talking films, including an adaptation of The Warrens of Virginia. De Mille also oversaw the founding of the Drama Department at the University of Southern California, where he taught from 1941 to 1953. His memoir, Hollywood Saga, was published in 1939. Learn more.


de Palma, Brian (1940 - )
Film
Director
'62CC

Brian de Palma has written and directed over thirty films, mainly in the thriller genre. His voyeuristic style has been compared to Alfred Hitchcock's, and his violent flair has been both criticized as manipulative and admired as virtuosic. His career was boosted in 1972, with his direction of the horror film Sisters, followed by other horror successes Obsession (1976), Carrie (1976), The Fury (1978), Dressed to Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981). Later thrillers include Raising Cain starring John Lithgow (1992), Snake Eyes starring Nicholas Cage (1998) and Femme Fatale starring Antonio Banderas (2002). Learn more.


Dean, Cecilia
Fashion
Art Curator, Editor
'90BC

As a young adult, Cecilia Dean modeled fashion for such famous photographers as Richard Avedon, Mario Testino, Steven Klein and Peter Lindbergh. The year she graduated from Barnard, Dean launched Visionaire with photographer Stephen Gan and makeup artist James Kaliardos, a limited-edition fashion and art quarterly based in SoHo. The publication is among the most elite in the industry; its issues showcase work built around themes like "Power" and "Paris," with content designed by curators rather than editors. Dean and her team launched the mass-market fashion magazine V in 1999 and VMAN in 2003.


Delaney, Elizabeth ("Bessie") (1891 - 1995)
Literature
Autobiographer
'23DDS

Sisters Bessie and Sadie Delaney collaborated with New York Times reporter Amy Hill Hearth on Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years (1993). The Delaneys lived through the Jim Crow era in North Carolina, moved to New York in the 1910s and watched the century unfold through the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights movement into the modern era. The book became a bestseller as a portrait of African-American life and pioneering professional women. Bessie was the only black woman in her class at the Columbia School of Dental and Oral Surgery and the second black female dentist to be licensed in the state of New York. Sadie earned her masters degree at Teachers College and became the first black woman to teach domestic science in New York City Public Schools.


Delaney, Sarah Louise ("Sadie") (1889 - 1999)
Literature
Autobiographer
20, 25TC

Sisters Bessie and Sadie Delaney collaborated with New York Times reporter Amy Hill Hearth on Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years (1993). The Delaneys lived through the Jim Crow era in North Carolina, moved to New York in the 1910s and watched the century unfold through the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights movement into the modern era. The book became a bestseller as a portrait of African-American life and pioneering professional women. Bessie was the only black woman in her class at the Columbia School of Dental and Oral Surgery and the second black female dentist to be licensed in the state of New York. Sadie earned her masters degree at Teachers College and became the first black woman to teach domestic science in New York City Public Schools.


Delano, William Adams (1874 - 1960)
Architecture
Architect
1895GSAPP (non-degree)

Along with partner Chester Holmes Aldrich, Delano designed elaborate residences for some of New York's wealthiest families, as well as the Yale Divinity School and a master plan for West Point (1948). After helping to renovate the White House under Calvin Coolidge, Delano became a consultant to every president through the 1950s; he designed the second-story porch at the behest of Harry Truman. Delano worked on the Federal Triangle in Washington D.C. and designed the U.S. Chancellery on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Later, he designed the 14 original buildings of the North Beach Airport (now La Guardia) in Queens. Among his honors are the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (1953) and the National Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal (1940).


Denby, David (1943 - )
Film, Literature
Critic, Author
'65CC

David Denby has served as longtime film critic for The New Yorker magazine and has edited a number of volumes of criticism, including Awake in the Dark: An Anthology of American Film Criticism (1977). Following a self-announced mid-life crisis, Denby returned to Columbia to retake the core curriculum. Denby's re-education resulted in Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World (1996), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in 1997.


Dennehy, Brian (1938 - )
Film, Television, Theater
Actor, Writer, Director and Producer
'65CC

Dennehy majored in history at Columbia College, where he also captained the football team. He finished his studies after a stint in the Marines. Since his film debut in Semi-Tough (1977), Dennehy has acted in more than forty film roles-from sheriff in First Blood, to lawyer in Presumed Innocent, to alien in Cocoon. Known for his range and everyman quality, Dennehy has also made stage appearances in productions such as Brecht's Galileo, Eugene O'Neill's Touch of a Poet and The Iceman Cometh, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, directed by Peter Brook, and his 1999 Drama Desk Award-and Tony-winning triumph in the fiftieth-anniversary Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Learn more.


Desai, Kiran (1971 - )
Literature
Novelist
'99SOA

Kiran Desai was inspired to write her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998), after hearing about a hermit who had lived in a tree in India for years. The work received the Betty Trask Award, a prize given to the best first novels written by citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35. Her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006), has received international critical praise, winning the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the 2006 National Cook Critics Circle Fiction Award. Desai moved from India to the United States at the age of fourteen, and has studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia.


Desjardins, Emma
Dance
Dancer
'03BC

Emma Desjardins joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in January 2006, after training and performing with Barnard's Dance Department as an undergraduate. In July 2008, the New York Times praised her performance of a solo piece newly choreographed by Cunningham as "a wonderful study in slow-moving tranquility and classical line." She is a native of Providence, Rhode Island. Learn more.


Deutsch, Babette (1895 - 1982)
Literature
Fiction writer, Poet
'17BC

Deutsch's compact and restrained poetry is collected in two volumes: Collected Poems: 1919-1962 and The Collected Poems of Babette Deutsch. Other collections include Banners (1919), Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (1954), and Coming of Age: New and Selected Poems (1959). She also authored a number of fiction works-among them the novels A Brittle Heaven (1926) and The Mask of Silenus (1933). Deutsch collaborated with husband Avrahm Yarmolinsky on translations of such works as Alexander Blok's The Twelve (1920) and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (1943). Deutsch took the Nation Poetry Prize in 1926 and the Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation Prize in 1941. She was awarded a Doctor of Letters from Columbia University in 1946, where she lectured in poetry from 1944-1971, as well as the William Rose Benet Memorial Award in 1957, and the Distinguished Alumna Award from Barnard in 1977, where a scholarship fund was established in her honor in 1979.


Deutsch, Helen (1906 - 1992)
Film
Screenwriter
'27BC

Deutsch's first screenwriting success was her adaptation of Enid Bagnold's novel, National Velvet, which earned five Academy Awards nominations, won two Oscars, and was named one of the year's ten best films by The New York Times. Her movie musical Lili (1953) won the Oscar, the Golden Globe and Writers Guild of America screen award for best musical. Deutsch also wrote the biopic of singer and actress Lillian Roth, I'll Cry Tomorrow (1956), which was honored with the Books and Authors Association Award. Deutsch was a founder and secretary of the New York Drama Critics Circle, and she took the Tony for Best Book of a musical for Carnival!, adapted from Lili, in 1962. Another major success was her 1964 film adaptation of the Broadway musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which garnered six Oscar nominations. Learn more.


Diamond, I. A. L. (1920 - 1988)
Film
Screenwriter, Producer
'41CC

After a decade of freelance writing, Diamond impressed director Billy Wilder with his comedy writing in 1955. The two collaborated Love in the Afternoon (1957) and the 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Diamond and Wilder won an Oscar as well as awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Writers Guild of America for The Apartment (1960), starring Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. Other films from the pair include One, Two, Three (1961), The Fortune Cookie (Academy Award nomination, 1966), and Buddy, Buddy (1981). Learn more.


Dietz, Howard (1896 - 1983)
Film, Theater
Lyricist, Publicity Director
'17CC

Dietz's affinity for the Columbia University mascot translated into the roaring lion emblem of MGM studios when film producer Samuel Goldwyn hired Dietz's advertising firm. Dietz later joined the board of directors of Loew's, MGM's parent company; he became Vice President of Loew's in 1942. Dietz is perhaps best known, however, as a lyricist for vaudeville and the stage. Along with Arthur Schwartz, Dietz wrote the librettos to a number of acclaimed musical revues. The pair also wrote the song, "That's Entertainment," originally a number in their movie musical The Band Wagon (1953). In 1950, Dietz translated the lyrics of Johann Strauss's operetta, Die Fledermaus, for the Metropolitan Opera. Dietz served on the board of directors of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) from 1959-1966. In 1983, he was honored with the first ASCAP Richard Rogers Award for lifetime achievement. Learn more.


DiGiulio, Edmund M. (1927 - 2004)
Film
Engineer
'50School of Mines

At Mitchell Camera Corporation and his own company, Cinema Products, DiGiulio invented technology that would transform the film industry. Mitchell's reflex viewing system allowed for the separation of the camera and the sound recorder on set. Mitchell also invented the System-35 Mark II, three-camera filming and the Steadicam, which allowed for greater freedom of movement. Mitchell won Oscars for technological innovation in 1969, 1978, 1993 and 1999, and in 2001, he was honored with the Gordon E. Sawyer Lifetime Achievement Academy Award. DiGiulio collaborated for many years with Stanley Kubrick on such films as Barry Lyndon (1975), for which he invented high-speed lenses to film scenes in candlelight, and A Clockwork Orange (1971). Learn more.


Dixon, Brandon Victor (1981 - )
Theater
Actor
'03CC

Before becoming a Broadway star, Brandon Victor Dixon graced the Columbia stage as a cast member of the 107th Annual Varsity Show. In October of 2002, the fall of his senior year, Brandon received his big professional break when he was chosen to play the part of Simba in the national tour of The Lion King. He was then cast as the lead role in a new Broadway show, The Color Purple, for which he was nominated for a Tony in 2006.


Doctorow, E.L. (1931 - )
Literature
Writer
'53GSAS

Edgar Laurence Doctorow's first literary success was The Book of Daniel (1971), which is set against the tumultuous backdrop of Columbia University in 1968. The novel's protagonist, Daniel, is a graduate student who spends much of his time at Butler Library researching his parents, who are loosely based on executed communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Since then, Doctorow's novels have been acclaimed for their blending of history and social commentary with epic plots. A number of his books have been both critical and commercial achievements, including Ragtime (1975), Billy Bathgate (1989) and The March (2005), the award-winning fictional account of General Sherman's Civil War campaign through the South.


Douglas, Helen Gahagan (1900 - 1980)
Film, Theater
Actress
'24BC

Douglas attended Barnard because of its proximity to Broadway; she left school for her Broadway debut as the lead in Dreams for Sale (1922). By 1925, she had performed Young Woodley over 260 times and been named one of the twelve most beautiful women in America. Douglas made her film debut in the classic horror film She (1935). Moved by what she witnessed touring Germany in the lead-up to World War II, she entered politics as a champion of progressive causes ranging from organized labor to environmental protection. She represented California in the U.S. Congress from 1944 to 1952.


Dow, Alden B. (1904 - 1983)
Architect
1931Architecture

An apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, Alden Dow’s unique architectural style was considered ahead of its time.  His philosophy of design is to work inspired by “honesty, humility, and enthusiasm.” Early in his career, Dow focused on residential design using his signature Unit Block construction.   In this patented method, Dow used white unit blocks, which, though they appeared to be a cube, were actually six-sided rhombuses that gained strength when stacked together.   Dow received the Diplome de Grand Prix in Paris’ 1937 International Exposition for best residential design in the world, partly for his own home and design studio, now a national landmark.  During his 50-year career, he designed a town (Lake Jackson, Texas) and was named “architect laureate” of Michigan in 1983.

Drucker, Eugene (1951 - )
Music
Violinist
'73CC

Eugene Drucker, an esteemed violinist and one of the founding members of the Emerson String Quartet, has appeared with the orchestras of Montreal, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Austin, Hartford, Richmond, Toledo and the Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as the American Symphony Orchestra and the Aspen Chamber Symphony. He was also a concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, his other Alma Mater, and is now a professor at Stony Brook University. Learn more.


du Plessix Gray, Francine (1930 - )
Literature
Writer
'52BC

Francine du Plessix Gray is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the author of numerous essays, nonfiction books, and novels, including Simone Weil (2001), At Home with the Marquis de Sade (1999), Rage and Fire (1994), and Lovers and Tyrants (1967). She recently published a portrait of her mother and father, Them: A Memoir of Parents (2005). Du Plessix Gray has been awarded France's Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.


Duncan, Todd (1903 - 1998)
Music, Theater
Singer, Actor, Teacher
'30TC

Baritone Todd Duncan began a 25-year stage career in Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana with the all-black Aeolian Opera in 1934. His debut led to an audition with George Gershwin, who hired Duncan for the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess. In 1945, Duncan became the first black man to perform opera with a white cast, singing Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Duncan sang 2,000 recitals in 56 countries, and mentored hundreds of students through his nineties.


Dunnock, Mildred (1901 - 1991)
Film, Theater
Actress, Director
'33TC

Dunnock's most notable role was Linda Loman in the original cast of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on Broadway in 1966. A schoolteacher, Dunnock taught by day and performed by night for years, appearing in plays such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Tartuffe. Dunnock films and television shows include John Steinbeck's Viva Zapata starring Marlon Brando (1952), Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955), Butterfield 8 starring Elizabeth Taylor (1960), and Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman (1962). She earned Academy Award nominations for Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman (1951) and Aunt Rose Comfort in Baby Doll (1956). Dunnock directed two stage productions and continued to act well into her eighties. Learn more.


DuPlessis, Rachel Blau (1941 - )
Literature
Poet, Essayist, Critic
'63BC , '64GSAS, '70PhD

DuPlessis has published a numerous articles and volumes of feminist literary criticism, most notably "For the Etruscans" from The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice (1990). DuPlessis describes her creative work since 1986, titled Drafts and published in volumes, as "interdependent, related, canto-like poems." Her essays and poetry share concerns such as subjectivity and gender, female figures in poetry, and cultural memory. DuPlessis's awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1986, 1988), a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (1990), and the Fund of Poetry's award for "service to American poetry" (1993). She is an English professor at Temple University.